Nanette Gartrell, MD

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Nanette Gartrell, M.D., is a 2012 Williams Institute Visiting Distinguished Scholar, UCLA School of Law. Dr. Gartrell also has a Guest Appointment at the University of Amsterdam, and she was previously on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and…

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Nanette Gartrell, M.D., is a 2012 Williams Institute Visiting Distinguished Scholar, UCLA School of Law. Dr. Gartrell also has a Guest Appointment at the University of Amsterdam, and she was previously on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and UCSF. She is a psychiatrist and researcher whose ground-breaking investigations have been published in professional journals and cited in the media. Dr. Gartrell has appeared on network television (including PBS, Good Morning America, CNN, NBC, CBS, and Fox News), and on public, talk, and Sirius satellite radio. She is the author of the bestselling MY ANSWER IS NO—if that's okay with you: How women can say NO with confidence. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, the Ladies Home Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Gartrell is the principal researcher of the US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), which since the 1980s, has been following and reporting on a cohort of planned lesbian families with children conceived through donor insemination. The NLLFS examines the social, psychological, and emotional development of the children as well as the dynamics of planned lesbian families. This is the longest-running and largest prospective investigation of lesbian mothers and their children in the United States. For a quarter century, this study has been providing information to specialists in healthcare, family services, adoption, foster care, sociology, feminist studies, education, ethics, same-sex marriage, civil union, and public policy on matters pertaining to LGBT families. www.nllfs.org

Dr. Gartrell has a private psychiatry practice, and for 15 years she has volunteered her psychiatric services to chronically mentally ill homeless people in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Her spouse of 37 years is Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Dee Mosbacher, M.D., Ph.D. Among other honors, Dr. Gartrell was the recipient of a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues (Division 44, American Psychological Association). She was also honored as “Researcher of the Year” by the UCSF Lesbian Health Research Center.

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